Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Oral Biopsy Procedures among Dental Surgeons Registered with Nepal Dental Association

Abstract

Background: Oral biopsy procedures are rarely practiced by dental surgeons around the world though they should be able to perform the biopsies for the diagnosis of oral lesions. Our objective was to access the knowledge, attitude and practice of oral biopsy procedures among the dental surgeons who are members of Nepal Dental Association.
Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted from December 2018 to March 2019, among the dental surgeons who were registered in Nepal Dental Association till September 2018. A standard pretested questionnaire was prepared using Google forms, was emailed to 374 dental surgeons. Two reminder emails were sent at an interval of 1 month. The non-responding dental surgeons who were reachable through mobile number (N=274) were contacted after the third 3rd email. Out of 274, 10 dental surgeons had completed postgraduation, so 264 of them were included in the study. A reminder call was made after one week. The data was entered in SPSS version 20 software and analyzed using descriptive statistics.
Results: There were 160 responses to the emails after the conversation through mobile phone. The response rate was 60.6% with the predominance of female responders (66.9%). Though the majority of dental surgeons (96.2%) had encountered one or the other lesions requiring biopsy, only few of them (7.5%) had performed the biopsy which was mainly due to lack experience and skill (75.6%).
Conclusions: Most of the dental surgeon are not comfortable performing biopsy with majority seem to lack expereice and skill. There is need to organize training to Dental Surgeons to enhance their practical skills.
Keywords: Dental surgeon; lesion; oral biopsy